Kronos (7 page)

He breathed deep three times, looking at the woman. She wore a stiffly-pressed uniform. Not a nurse. She stood straight as an arrow, perfect posture. Her face, while soft, was firm and serious. The muscles of her arms rippled when she moved her fingers.

Through his anger he sensed familiarity. Her eyes. Looking at them again, his clouded memory opened up and transported him to a time before he became a Navy SEAL. Andrea Vincent. Every summer his family would travel to northern New Hampshire, where they owned a cabin at a privately run campground. Andrea’s family did the same, and for five summers from ages twelve to seventeen, they had been an inseparable duo. They became romantic at sixteen and soon discovered they lived within a half hour drive from each other. When Atticus got his driver’s license he began visiting her weekly. Despite college putting a physical distance between them, their relationship stayed strong and talk of marriage crept into their late night conversations. That is, until Atticus made the decision to join the military. It was a distance and strain that no amount of phone calls could correct. There was no dramatic break up, no “I think we should just be friends” moment. They simply lost touch and faded into each other’s pasts.

But she stood before him now. A little taller. Stronger. Sporting longer hair and a more angular face. More striking than he remembered. Her uniform was what held his attention, though. She’d been opposed to his joining the Navy. Said he’d lose his soul.

“You joined the military?” he finally asked, doing his best to appear put together and in control. Too much so, he realized, in the face of an old friend he should be hugging.

“Coast Guard. Petty Officer First Class.” she said. Her face flickered with disappointment. Had she expected a happier reunion? Or did she know about his daughter? “You must be feeling better?”

Atticus hadn’t taken stock of his condition. He knew he’d been unconscious, but for how long he had no idea. Dizziness set in, and he sat down on the bed. A nurse entered the room, looking concerned. “Mr. Young, you’re awake… Can I—”

“I’m fine,” he said, a little too gruff. When the nurse left with a huff, he felt bad for being rude, but as Andrea was with the Coast Guard, she might have answers.

Andrea sat in a chair, across from the bed, in front of the window. She looked out. “Beautiful view.”

Atticus looked out the window again. The trees were bright green. A few cumulus clouds drifted past. The ocean glimmered in the distance. “Not anymore.”

She turned to him, her face saddened for a moment, but not because of his rudeness. He was all business in spite of their history, and he wanted to cut through the malarkey and talk about why she was really there. “We’re still looking for your daughter.”

His eyes fell to the floor. “You won’t find her.”

“Why is that?”

“She’s dead.”

“It took her?”

Atticus met Andrea’s eyes; his glare was full of suspicion. “That’s what you’re distress call said. It took her.” Andrea paused. “What took her?”

“Please tell me you’re not turning this into some kind of murder investigation,” Atticus said, his voice becoming like stone.

“No…not a chance.” She was adamant. “The police said you rescued your daughter from being raped this morning. Really put the fear of God into the men who attacked her.”

He nodded.

“No one suspects you of anything. Especially not me.”

“Because you know me?”

“It’s been nearly twenty years. I don’t know you that well.” Andrea took a breath, then looked out the window, gazing at the ocean. “What took her, Atticus?”

Atticus’s head slowly moved from side to side as he replayed the blurry images locked forever in his memory. “I don’t know.”

“A great white, an eighteen-footer, was spotted off Beverly Harbor last week. Could it have been—”

“It wasn’t a great white. It wasn’t a shark.”

“A whale then? Orca? Sperm whale? Perhaps a blue hunting krill scooped her up?”

Atticus’s face flushed crimson. “Do you know who I am now? What I do? Did you do any research before coming to see me?”

“Atticus…You are an oceanographer. You do work for independent firms, sometimes for the military. You’re an ex–Navy SEAL, highly decorated. You wrote
Ocean’s in Peril,
which is a great book, by the way. I knew who you were when I found you choking on your own puke.”

Atticus sat silently. He replayed the attack in his mind, slowed it down, took in the details. “It wasn’t a shark. It wasn’t a whale. I have never seen, nor has anyone else on the planet, seen anything like it.”

Andrea sat down next to him. She put her hand on his shoulder, a gentle gesture from a kind woman to a hurting man. “I have,” she said.

Atticus slowly craned his head around toward her. His eyebrows rose ever so slightly.

“Yesterday…we were pulling a Frenchwoman out of the water…”

Atticus nodded. He’d seen a thirty-second bit on the news about it. Her husband had been found too—drowned when the boat went down.

“But we saw something. It was huge. And I mean huge. Swam directly beneath the chopper. The Frenchwoman managed to snap a few photos.”

Atticus’s eyes went wide. “Where are they?”

“Taken. Some boys from the Navy took the camera and flash memory card.”

Atticus’s shoulders dropped.

“But not before I transferred them to my thumb drive,” Andrea added with a slight smirk. She dug in her pocket and held aloft the small USB device. “Two pictures. Both from above. One shows the shadow, just beneath the surface. The other is of the footprint it caused when it dived.”

“Must be one hell of a footprint,” Atticus said.

“Bigger than I’ve ever seen.”

With a shake of his head, he said, “I had a camera…Giona did too. When it…She still had her camera. Mine was video. Must have dropped it when I surfaced.” Atticus cursed himself. He should have held on. He’d been recording everything. He might have got the creature on film. It could have proved useful.

“Speaking of surfacing,” Andrea said. “You’ve got a mild case of the bends. I don’t think it’s what knocked you out. The doctors say that and the vomiting was shock. You might feel some nausea or headaches—”

“I know the symptoms,” Atticus said. “I was trained to deal with them.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“A SEAL never forgets.”

Andrea eyed him with suspicion for the first time. Could she tell he was already plotting?

“Just do me a favor and stay here overnight. The police have a guard outside the door.”

“I thought I wasn’t a suspect.”

“He’s not there to keep you in,” Andrea said. She jerked a thumb toward the window. “It’s to keep them out.”

Atticus stood up and looked out the window. A crowd of reporters and news vans, even a few helicopters, all bearing news-station logos, swarmed outside the hospital.

“Your distress call was heard by everyone. You were already front-page news because of the incident this morning. Nice work, by the way. When word about who had placed the distress call spread, a fire was lit under the butts of the media machine. Some reporters actually beat us here. Got some footage of you being taken out of the Jayhawk.”

Atticus sighed. He was trapped. The media had to be avoided. He didn’t want anyone keeping tabs on him. No one could know what he planned to do…especially Andrea. Being with the Coast Guard, she could ruin everything.

“So you’ll stay here then?”

“Looks like I don’t have a choice,” Atticus replied.

Her hand was on his shoulder again. Her honest eyes almost looked wet. “Atticus, I really am sorry about what happened. If you need my help, ever, for anything, please call me.” She handed him a piece of paper. On it was written her address, cell-phone number, and home number. He was taken aback by the earnest tone of her voice and the friendly grip on his shoulder. Could old friends pick up where they’d left off?

“Why?” he asked.

“We share a common bond, Atticus.”

“Our past.”

“No. My daughter, Abigail…she was killed last year. Hit-and-run. Drunk driver. She was nine.”

“I’m…sorry. And your husband?”

“Boyfriend. Left when I got pregnant.” Andrea looked into his eyes, burrowing into his consciousness, or was it his conscience? “I understand how you’re feeling. I
know
what you want to do. Please, just wait.”

She could see right through him. Perhaps it was because she’d lived through a daughter’s death herself? It didn’t matter. His mind couldn’t be changed. He was a missile preparing for launch. Preparing to kill.

Andrea gave his shoulder a squeeze and headed for the door. She paused, her hand on the handle. “Hang in there, Atti.” With that, she left.

He stood silent and still for a moment. The only person to ever call him Atti had been Maria. He stifled his rising emotions. They would serve no purpose.

Atticus clenched his fists so tight that his palms burned with pain. The guys who’d attacked Giona that morning had got off easy. Only his responsibility to his daughter had allowed him to refrain from killing them on the spot. Maria and Giona had tempered his violent side, his training. He’d even become a pacifist. Revenge was something he’d been adept at in the past. He had gutted the sniper whose bullet had missed his skull. The drill sergeant who’d pummeled him during basic training had been found five years later, outside a bar, badly beaten, suffering from a broken nose, dislocated shoulder, and several impacted teeth. A man who’d grabbed Maria’s butt and moved in for a kiss, found the four fingers on Maria’s backside suddenly broken. But the woman he loved and the daughter born to him, who had turned him from a killer to a gentle man who couldn’t crush an invasive species, were both gone.

The coldness and hard-heartedness of his past began creeping up on him. He felt a chill run up his back. There was a lot to do. Killing something the size of a jumbo jet was going to be a challenge. But he knew in his heart, the creature didn’t stand a chance. Not against
him.

10

Somewhere on the Atlantic Ocean

The knife pierced oozing red flesh, then struck bone and fell from the wielder’s hand.

“Oh, bloody hell,” blurted Trevor Manfred. With stark white hair that flared out like Andy Warhol’s and a lanky body clothed in black-leather pants and a dark gray turtleneck, he didn’t look like a man whose every need was tended to. But when the sterling silver steak knife had finished rattling on the deck, he made no move to pick it up. Instead, he merely let out a sigh while a servant dressed in a white Armani suit accented with gold cuff links bent down, picked up the knife, and, using a fine violet-silk napkin, wiped down the deck where the knife had fallen. Only moments after the knife had fallen, the glorious sheen of the oak deck had been restored and all traces of the accident erased. Simultaneously, a similarly dressed second servant offered Trevor a new blade, sliding it handle first over his sleeve toward his employer.

Trevor looked at the half-eaten well-marbled T-bone steak, cooked rare, oozing red juices, and lined with thick strips of fat. The steak’s accompaniments, deep-fried onion rings and a tall bottle of dark lager, served as a stark contrast to the otherwise opulent surroundings. “Take all but the beer. Next time make it steak tips. The only bones I want to see from now on are in the collection. Understood?”

With a nod, the silent servant made his retreat, taking the tray table, food, and utensils with him. The second servant followed, carrying only the soiled silk napkin and dropped knife. As the two men left the foremost bow deck, Trevor stood from his plush lounge chair and approached the front rail. He grasped it with one hand and downed the beer, chugging it like his chums on the college rugby team used to. The beer emptied, he wound up and sent the bottle sailing over the deck. He watched the brown missile spinning end over end, falling for a quick three seconds until it splashed into the ocean and disappeared, far, far below the forward deck of Trevor’s mobile mansion on the ocean.

The
Titan,
five hundred feet long and seventy-five feet wide, was the world’s largest megayacht—Trevor’s megayacht. Its design was trendsetting, sporting a loggia that stretched over the whole width of the yacht, linking the fully stocked salon with the resplendent dining room. At the stern of the ship was a round room featuring a three-hundred-degree view. A garage that opened to the ocean below held a submersible at the lowest point of the ship. A black Sikorsky VH-3D helicopter (the same helicopter that transported the president of the United States) sat on the helipad at the highest point of the ship, just behind the pool.

Every piece of décor had been purchased, or otherwise obtained, by Trevor and placed specifically where he indicated. Banisters were topped with gold gargoyles or naked women…sometimes both. The pool on the
Titan
’s top deck was shaped like a Chinese dragon, undulating up and down and curving around on itself. The bow, like those of ancient ships of old, was adorned by a beautifully sculpted and scantily clad woman bearing a trident and shield, and wearing a horned helmet. Statues, pilfered from the ancient cultures of many nations, decorated everything from bathrooms to the grand library, which contained thirty thousand books. The centerpiece of the ship was
the collection.
Trevor’s pride and joy. Put simply, it was a huge accumulation of art, relics, and natural phenomena over which the Museum of Natural History would salivate. The entire ship, from bow to stern, reflected the taste of a man obsessed with mythology and ancient history. But for Trevor, it wasn’t enough to satiate his need to explore the unknown, to experience fresh new ideas or ancient wonders.

The bottle resurfaced and bobbed in the five-foot swells. Trevor realized that while he was the fifth richest man on the planet, who had all the world’s oceans as his playground, he had been reduced to watching a floating bottle as entertainment.